A massive day today, although only one picture to show for it.

We’ve collected, sorted and bundled all the loose timber sleepers, which leaves the job looking really clean.

We’ve marked up next week’s work, the next curve, which was around 300 sleepers, so should be easily achieved next week.

We even found time to install an additional 19 sleepers before squeezing up the ramp, which, although not a lot, is an hour or two we dont need to worry about next week.

Next week, being our first full week of work, we’ll focus the workdays around Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, keeping Wednesday as a digger day getting sleepers inserted.

We’re looking a bit light on for gang numbers on Monday, so any extra hands would be appreciated, meeting Maldon 8am or on site from 8.15am

We’re now well and truly over the crest of the hill and into the short straight section between the curves.

It didn’t take too long to get yesterday’s insertions clipped up, that was pretty well behind us by morning tea.

We lifted a small dip that had come from the ramp we installed last week, which took about 5 minutes, before moving on to reach the end of this curve.

The next few sleepers were marked up and spikes pulled.

Both diggers we in action this afternoon, which makes the job about 200 times easier, the extra grunt from the big one makes lifting the track just a little higher to get a stubborn sleeper in much easier in these tight cuttings.

We got quite swift at things after a while, making cuttings seem much less onerous.

By day’s end, that was an additional 60 on top of Tuesday/Yesterday’s 260, taking this week’s total to 320, very similar to last week.

We’ll likely not insert any additional sleepers tomorrow, however we’ll tidy up all the timber, mark up the next curve and make as many preparations as we can ready for Monday morning, next week will be our first full week (and also the last for a another few weeks!)

Meeting out on site from 8am tomorrow morning (by the piles of timber sleepers).

The slightly cooler day today, resulted in lots of productivity. The remaining clipping up of the 1 in 4 was completed swiftly, with the next pass through (as seen in these pics) well in hand by lunch time.

We had to run the little digger up to Maldon to unload a delivery, on the way back a zoomed in view of the recent works shows the very significant difference of the timber vs concrete sleepers, it looks incredibly impressive.

Working in the tight part of the cutting was a pain, however it is manageable, but does add at least 2 mins per sleeper compared with elsewhere. However we’re now over the summit… just.

By the end of today, we’d got around 3/4 of the remaining sleepers inserted and about half of those squeezed up ready for clipping up. Giving us an excellent chance of not only knocking this over tomorrow but hopefully doing a few more.

Meeting Maldon 8am or on site from 8.15am

Today was extremely successful, and we’ve reached the summit – it’s nowhere near complete, but we’re their.

Friday was unfortunately quite unsuccessful, with both diggers disgracing themselves, both relatively minor in the scheme of things, the little one required a new hose, which took about 1.5hrs to replace. The big one failed on a trip up to Maldon, which proved very time consuming to get home, but all done, issue found and hopefully later this week the part will have turned up and it’ll be back in business. We still managed to finish what we needed to and completed a further 32 sleepers, taking the weekly total to 328 Sleepers – not bad at all for week one.

We’re crossing the fingers for a bit more luck this week, so far we’ve aimed to install 260 sleepers – we’re expecting much slower progress in the cuttings – we have extremely close cuttings on our line, giving very little wiggle room to do sleeper changes, however so far we’re doing OK, just a bit slower than last week.

We’ve got 65 sleepers under the track at the 1 in 4 spacings, all have the biscuits set and the majority are clipped up, finishing that will be job one tomorrow.

We’re quietly hopefully of getting all the sleepers under tomorrow and Thursday, hopefully leaving us the chance to knock over another 40 or so later in the week, but given the short week, we don’t want to get too ambitious, a small breakdown certainly loses a lot of time.

Tomorrow’s crew meeting at Maldon at 8am or on site from 8.15am